In these final days of the school year, make a list of phone numbers and e-mail addresses of teachers at your school. Talk to your students’ parents and get their contact information as well. We need your help in organizing this summer. Download the spreadsheet at the bottom of this post and e-mail it to coreteachers@gmail.com.

In an emergency meeting on Tuesday, the Board of Education voted unanimously to give CEO Ron Huberman the authority to fire tenured and non-tenured teachers and increase class sizes to 35 students per class.

The Board will work overtime this summer to ensure their demands are met. They assume that teachers, PSRPs, parents, and students will be “on vacation.” The last thing the board wants us to do is to continue organizing.

The Union will contact all stakeholders to fight the layoffs and ballooning class sizes.

In Solidarity,

President-Elect Karen Lewis

Summer Organizing Contacts

$60 million in high-stakes tests; $250 million in TIFs; $315 million in charters, turnarounds, and contract schools; $400 million in CPS cash reserve. What about money for students?

CPS called  an emergency Board meeting on Tuesday, June 15 to pass a resolution that will drastically change our working conditions and the learning opportunities for our students.  The resolution was passed unanimously at the meeting, in spite of every single speaker during the “public participation” portion urging the board members to vote “no.” This resolution gives CEO Huberman permission to fire teachers and therefore raise class size up to 35 if he deems it “necessary” for budgetary reasons. It also gives him the permission to take out an $800 million loan, which he claims cannot be used to stave off the firings and ballooning class sizes.

This budget has still not been made public, in spite of Freedom of Information Act requests from CORE and various Chicago journalists. These firings will be based on Huberman’s secret projections and without real budget numbers.

No announcement was made about how many teachers they will fire, if any. They claimed this was “just in case” they felt the need to fire teachers later.

Appendix H of our contract states:

Section I – Scope of Policy
Whenever an attendance center or a program is closed, there is a drop in enrollment,
the educational focus of the attendance center is changed such that available teaching
positions cannot accommodate some or all current regularly certified and appointed
teaching staff, or when an attendance center is subject to actions taken pursuant to
sections 34-8.3 or 34-8.4 of the Illinois School Code, tenured teachers will be
reassigned or laid off in accordance with this policy.

The contract states teachers have to be laid off according to seniority and tenured teachers get ten paid months to find a job. In those ten months, teachers are retained in the “reassignment pool” where they work as substitutes four days a week with full pay and benefits without a break in service.

Because the specific phrase “budgetary reasons” is not included in the “scope of policy”, Huberman claims he can fire tenured teachers without giving them the 10 month bridge to continue employment in CPS.

CORE contends  that none of this is necessary. Although there is no line-item budget available for the 2010-2011 school year, CORE’s budget committee studied the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) and found millions of dollars in wasteful non-classroom spending.

The city’s TIF (tax increment financing program) costs the schools $250 million in revenue, according to TIF expert Ben Joravsky, and verified by Cook County Clerk David Orr . This is money that normally would go directly to schools, but goes into the mayor’s slush fund instead.

Many  speakers at Tuesday’s meeting spoke in favor of returning TIF dollars to the schools, but Huberman refused to speak to the issue.

It will save the CPS approximately $150 million a year if they raise class sizes to 35. Instead of lobbying the city to return TIF dollars, Huberman and the Daley-appointed Board passed policy to take out an $800 million dollar loan, raise class sizes, and possibly end the teacher reassignment pool. If it’s a question of priorities, we question the board’s.

Lois Jones, CTU High School Functional Vice-President-Elect, pointed out that 25 or fewer students in a classroom should be the first priority, before the board funds area offices, scripted curricula that don’t work, and other costs we don’t know about because we haven’t seen the budget. Putting more students in a class is the LAST thing you should do if you have budget problems, not the first.

Teachers and students are the only ones asked to make sacrifices. This summer, it’s crucial that we keep on top of the Board and continue organizing around budget transparency and quality education. With 30,000 united,  the Board will have to change they way it does business.

*at the time of the broadcast, the CTU provided no details or documentation for their lawsuit. This may be due to the fact that the charges have no legal precedent and the actual transgression had not yet occurred.

Karen Lewis on Moving Forward June 3, 2010.

An historic moment at Connie's Pizza. CORE's Presidential Candidate Karen Lewis met with caucus leaders Deborah Lynch (PACT), Linda Porter (CSDU), and Ted Hajiharis (SEA) about going forward with bringing UNITY back to the Chicago Teachers Union. All three of those caucuses endorsed CORE in the June 11th Run-Off Election.

Karen Lewis’ speech to the House of Delegates (6/2/2010):

Good afternoon.  I would like to thank PACT, CSDU and SEA for running honest campaigns, based on the issues; and for their support.

I am honored … and exhilarated.  Those of you who are unaligned and voted for CORE, thank you.

Last week’s rally was incredible.  All of us in this room turned out thousands of people to tell Huberman and Daley “No” — stop destroying our neighborhood schools and trying to bust our union.

We should have done this every year for the past six years.

Because for years there has been a well-funded national smear campaign against public school teachers. Gains we won over 70 years of struggle are being stripped away. I have taught in this system for over 20 years and I have never seen this level of attack – scapegoating educators for all that ails urban schools.

But on June 11th we have a  chance to end this business as usual, top-down unionism.

The most important thing Union leaders do is build consensus and organize members to speak and act as ONE.  But who has heard our voice in the past 6 years?  Who has seen a real fight against privatizing Chicago’s schools?  Big business sees K-12 public education as 350 billion dollars they weren’t getting a piece of.  Why haven’t we heard our leadership attack that profit motive – and PROVE IT?  Why has our Union seemed complicit in its silence?

My opponent charges that we aren’t experienced despite the fact that we worked to stop 12 school closing and saved a thousand jobs. We had to sue the Board for budget and TIF details so we DON’T have to reopen the contract. You can’t talk numbers if you don’t have real information.  We have the former vice-president of CTU, Howard Heath, who has not only negotiated a contract, he’s a mathematician who can crunch the numbers with the best of them.  We’ve got lawyers and old contracts so we’re ready!

Let me share something with you.  You already know that I’m the wife and daughter of CTU members and I went to Chicago Public Schools. But I am the only Black woman in the class of 1974 at Dartmouth College and  I got that degree when I was 20 years old.  I know how to stand strong in the face of adversity and win.  I am not afraid.   Never have been.

The current leadership claims that the safe bet now is to stay the course.

Clearly members didn’t buy that.

Two-thirds voted against the very candidate Huberman has backed in secret meetings over the last couple months.

On May 25 we said NO to repeating “the Marilyn experience” that cost 6,000 members their jobs.  We said NO to pension raids.  We said NO to the unchecked powers of abusive principals. We said No to rising class sizes.

We’re going to bring real technology to this union so our members have access to relevant information.  We’re going to have real delegate training so everyone knows how to run an election smoothly, help the members in our schools and provide professional development that makes us more effective educators and unionists.

We will have a political strategy that is based on our ability to initiate and take the lead on legislation, not wait until the hammer drops – especially after the beating we just took in Springfield with the pension raid, the diabetes fiasco and a voucher bill that just won’t die.  We’re ready.

So, I ask you today, will we stand united?  Will we stop the attacks on our members? An injury to one is an injury to all.  CORE represents what called us to the teaching profession in the first place.  That commitment must be fused in out Union’s work every day.  Let’s rebuild our spirit, our public image and harness the power of 30,000 members.  Reclaim the joy of teaching and learning.

SUIT FILED 5/20/10

Huberman won't come clean with the actual budget numbers.

From The Chicago Tribune:

Teacher’s group sues CPS over access

May 20, 2010

A union group that is vying for power in Friday’s Chicago Teachers Union election has filed a lawsuit against the Chicago Board of Education, claiming it is in violation of the Illinois Freedom of Information Act.

CORE Candidate for Area Vice President Norine Gutekanst delivers FOIA request to the Attorney General's office, surrounded by members of CORE and the Grassroots Education Movement (GEM)

On April 28th, the Grassroots Education Movement, CORE and more than 50 teachers from 10 different schools throughout the city held a press conference in front of the State of Illinois building to force the Chicago Public Schools to adhere to the Freedom of Information Act. The gathering spoke first about the need for transparency before any budget cuts are in place after which everyone proceed to move inside of the building and request a meeting with Attorney General, Lisa Madigan.

The letter was received by the Assistant Public Access Counselor who quickly notified CPS that they were in non-compliance of the FOIA law and must provide the documents that I, on behalf of CORE and GEM, requested on March 27th. Thanks to the efforts of this gathering, there may finally be a way to determine whether or not Huberman and his financial appointees are telling the public the truth or hiding a surplus to justify draconian teacher cuts in the fall.

Representative from Attorney General's Office receives letter.

CORE FOR CTU Ad on Vimeo.

Presidential Candidate Karen Lewis at the Curie HS Town Hall Meeting

Press from the 2009 School Closings Protest

Recording Secretary Candidate Michael Brunson at the Board of Education

Financial Secretary Candidate Kristine Mayle at the Guggenheim School Closing Hearing

Presidential Candidate Karen Lewis

CORE Co-Chair Jackson Potter at the Martin Luther King Jr. Day Rally

CORE Budget Committee Chair Kurt Hilgendorf at the Martin Luther King Jr. Day Rally

The Struggle Against Renaissance

Arne Duncan/Advance Illinois Protest

Public Dollars, Public Schools

Opening Commentary by Vice Presidential Candidate Jesse Sharkey

Stop School Closings!

CORE:  The Caucus of Rank-and-file Educators

CHICAGO — On March 12, 2010, CPS CEO Ron Huberman sent a memo to all CPS Principals stating that he is “prohibiting the distribution, circulation and exhibition of all union campaign material on school grounds”, including Union members’ mailboxes and a Union bulletin board under the guise that electoral campaign information is not “official Union business.”

As of the end of business day March 16, 2010, there was still no condemnation on the Chicago Teachers Union website or sent to CTU members.

CPS teacher Karen Lewis, CORE’s CTU Presidential candidate, stated that, “Ron Huberman needs to stay out of union business.  How does providing information to teachers and support personnel on the upcoming CTU election – which will have far-reaching effects on their lives – interfere with teaching and learning?  Marilyn Stewart, under the guise of ‘official union business’, is campaigning all over this city.  It’s clear who Mr. Huberman supports.  There is no neutrality here.”

“Huberman is going to do everything in his power to maintain business as usual – a CTU leadership that does not vigorously challenge CPS policy. This is a not only a breach of past practice, it is a clear violation of the Illinois Education Labor Relations Board prohibitions against Unfair Labor Practices.  It’s also unconstitutional,” said Jackson Potter, CORE Co-chair.

The Preamble of the current CTU contract states that “a free and open exchange of views is desirable and necessary… [and] will increase the effectiveness of teachers … in the classroom and the community.”  According to Lewis, “Our workplace conditions are our students’ learning conditions.  If the free speech rights of teachers and paraprofessionals are not protected, we are powerless to demand our students’ rights to a full, equitable education.”

“The fact that this is codified in our contract indicates its importance.  Perhaps Mr. Huberman should do his homework and read page one of our contract.  And then, read the rest,” said Lewis.

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CORE is the reform caucus of the Chicago Teachers Union that represents rank-and-file members and the students and families they serve. The group is comprised of teachers, retired teachers and educational staff.